September 8-15

Some men compliment their wives: "You look nice today, dear."  Bryan compliments me, but not in the same way.  Nothing so boring as "that dress looks good on you."  No, the compliment that I got the other day was said half to himself in a congratulatory tone: "I got such a good specimen."

Olivia's favorite song to sing to herself is "Are You Sleeping?"  She's actually quite easy to understand, at least for the first and last lines.

And speaking of Olivia's singing, she enjoys singing along with her CDs in the car.  They've got lots of kid songs with repetitive bits that she can pick up on.  One song in particular, Alice the Camel, is very repetitive until the end.  Alice the Camel has 5 humps, Alice the Camel has 4 humps, etc, all the way down to Alice the Camel has no humps.  Olivia can't be bothered to wait for the ending, though, so as soon as the song starts playing, she blurts out (SPOILER ALERT), "It's a horse!  Mommy, the camel is a horse!"

In the movie Men in Black, Will Smith's character delivers an alien baby.  As he looks at the little squid creature, he says, "You know, it's actually kind of..." (baby spits in his face) "...cute."  I realized this week that Gretchen is that creature.  Check out the video starting at 1:45 and you'll see what I mean.  Or watch the whole clip; it's only 2 minutes long.  :)

The girls and I headed east for a few days to visit Justine and William while Joseph was gone on business.  We hung out and made applesauce.  Justine had a sauce maker machine that she borrowed from a friend, and once we got that all put together correctly (she received it incorrectly assembled), smushing apples was a breeze.  Side note:  I own a similar machine that I hadn't used yet.  I now know that it works great, and I'm super excited that I own it.  :)  Unfortunately, our second batch of applesauce had issues (lack of headspace combined with plastic rings is a bad plan for canning) AND we ran out of time to finish the last half bushel.  We did make some pretty tasty apple butter, although that took longer than expected as well.  Fun times were had all around, and the cousins enjoyed playing together.  And we got tasty applesauce to boot.  :)

One thing I decided during the trip to Pennsylvania was that someone need to devise a way to refuel cars mid-drive.  I'm envisioning something similar to fighter jets refueling mid-flight.  Both girls had settled into afternoon naps after a brief snack at a rest stop.  I was hoping my tank of gas would make it all the way to Justine's house, but about half an hour out we were getting pretty empty.  I stopped to fill up and suddenly had two awake babies.  :-/

Gretchen can roll from front to back now.  At least, I assume that's what is happening when I put her down on her back, find her a bit later on her stomach (old news), and then come by even later and find her on her back again.  No one has actually witnessed the rolling, but Justine and I both saw the changes in position.

Way back before Gretchen was born, I asked for freezer meal recipes and promised 15 bonus points to the person who submitted Bryan's favorite.  The winner of those 15 points is Grandma for her submission of Spaghetti Pie!  Your points have been updated.  A note: We finished eating freezer meals months ago; I just kept forgetting to post the points.  :)

Pictures and Video:

Vimeo is my video poison of choice.  Click the links below to see some videos of the girls from this past week.  Password is BarhorstBrewed.  If it doesn't work, let me know and I'll fix it.

Olivia Talks
Giggly Gretchen

This is how Olivia chose to nap in the car:

Saying hi to Daddy:

Toys of choice?  A cup (William) and a battery operated air mattress pump (Olivia):